SECOND QUARTER 2024
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #2
APRIL 13, 2024
“THE CENTRAL ISSUE: LOVE OR SELFISHNESS?”

From Sabbath Afternoon: “We will study Satan’s twofold strategy both to deceive and destroy God’s people.  What the evil one fails to accomplish through persecution, he hopes to achieve through compromise. God is never caught by surprise, and even in the most challenging times He preserves His people.”

How does this tie into the central issue of love vs selfishness?

How does Satan deceive?

The first Satanic lie was the belief that God was selfish and that He operated from a self-preservation construct that motivated Him in His dealings with humanity and angelic beings, like Satan himself.  This lie was persuasive enough to sway 1/3 of the angelic host and later, the parents of the human race.  (Genesis 3:5)

For the most part I grew up in an unchurched environment.  That is, pop culture was my church.  Messages of love were all around me.  The noble pursuit of love was a given.  We loved ice cream, our favorite baseball team, a catchy song on the radio, a funny or attractive classmate, a musician or celebrity, etc.  Whatever brought value to our lives, we loved.  Reading about or witnessing courageous acts of self-giving for the sake of friends, family or country were admired as the highest form of heroism and love.  The culture also groomed us to accept that sensuality, seduction and spontaneous physical intimacy that required no commitment was experientially “making love.” 

What we did NOT love was an awful performance on the field of play, a mean or cruel classmate, other people’s ill-behaved children, the brash and conceited, etc.  Far from bringing value, they were to be shunned and perhaps punished.  They were not one of us.  

Projecting this understanding of love upon God seemed as natural as a blue sky.

Is this what John meant when he penned, “God is love” (1 John 4:8)?   Is this the love that stares down selfishness into submission and brings all things under His feet? (see Hebrews 2:8; 1 Corinthians 15:24; Ephesians 1:22).

Scripture reveals a much different love than even the noblest of humanity or our religions have derived.  The love of God revealed in the Bible tells us that God’s love, and therefore His gift of salvation, is not limited to the lovely nor dependent on the beauty or goodness of its object.  Or, perhaps more importantly, its object’s level of response, if any.  God’s love, His redemptive activity in Christ, goes well beyond the limits of human love.  This love actively loves the mean, the ugly, the outcast, and even enemies — it puts a claim on them as belonging to it. (Romans 5:6-10; 2 Corinthians 5:19, 20; John 3:16; Romans 3:22-24; Colossians 1:19-20).  This claim that love has on humanity has an intrinsic drawing dynamic buried in the human psyche as we were created to love and be loved.  (Genesis 1:27; Romans 2:4, John 12:32.)

This is the love that seeks not its own.  Hopes and believes all things.  Never fails.  It will endure the curse of eternal abandonment, putting the well-being of others ahead of, and at any cost to, itself; it will, if necessary, relinquish its very existence.  (1 Corinthians 4:8; Galatians 3:13; Hebrews 2:9; Psalm 22:1, 12-17).

The cross of Christ exposed Satan as a liar and human love as love of self.  (John 8:44; 12:31; Matthew 5:46).

This everlasting covenant of Peace was the weaponry employed to meet the challenge of selfishness (Genesis 3:15; John 19:30; Psalm 22:31).  God has emptied Himself, embraced and adopted fallen humanity in the person of His Son, counted His perfect life and sacrificial death to their account, and raised a new humanity, a last Adam, in Himself, at the resurrection.  Finally, bringing this redeemed humanity to the right hand of the Father. (Philippians 2:5-8; Ephesians 1:3-7, 18-21; 2:4-10; 2 Corinthians 5:17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:30: 15:3, 4, 47-49). 

The vast dimensions of grace and love expressed to make this a reality is beyond measure.  The cost to the Godhead was infinite and heartbreaking. (Zechariah 13:6, 7; Isaiah 53:3-5; Psalm 18:4-15; Mark 14:34-36).

When the early apostles grasped the truth of God’s character and what the cross meant, it equipped their minds and hearts with a fearlessness and boldness to present and represent this picture to those in their sphere.  The truth had set them free.  Their self-seeking had been conquered by the meek and lowly One.  No more concern for rewards or evading punishment.  To them, such old covenant religion was “worth nothing” in light of the grand dimensions of love revealed at Calvary. (Ephesians 3;14-19; Steps to Christ p. 44).

As the apostles, empowered by the Holy Spirit, spread this good news, it resonated with every human heart.  God had historically, objectively “reconciled the world to Himself” and “abolished [the second] death” bringing “life and immortality to light through the gospel” “destroying the works of the devil”!  (2 Corinthians 5:19; 2 Timothy 1:10, 1 John 3:8). Some rejected or ignored that appeal, severely and perhaps permanently, restricting the gospel’s application in their respective lives.  Those who did not resist the truth had their hearts captivated by a revolutionary reality that awakened a deep-seated purpose in their lives that could not be denied. 

The idea that the God of the universe, the Prince of Glory, would come all the way from Heaven to surrender His life on a Roman cross empowered them to no longer live for themselves but for Him who loved them and gave Himself for them. (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15; Galatians 2:20).  The antidote for selfishness in their proud hearts was not to be more committed, busy or even faithful.  It was to “behold” Him on His cross.  “Christ died for me!  I must live for Him.”  (Revelation 5:6-14; 1 John 3:1-2; Christ’s Object Lessons, pp. 133, 355).

This is the only context in which good deeds are free from selfish motivation.  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3; Galatians 5:4-6).  This was the context that drove the early Christians to serve those in need and remain faithful to the Savior during difficult times.  They saw themselves as “crucified with Christ,” “dead to sin” with their lives “hid” in Him.

The lesson asks on Thursday, “How can we learn to die to self so that we, too, can manifest the same selfless spirit?”  Jesus tells us “His yoke is easy and His burden is light” and to “learn of Me”. Matt 28.  Paul writes in Philippians 2, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  God wants to give us this mind.  Our job is to “let” Him do it.  He seeks to persuade us to give up the hard work of resisting His grace.  It is a “fight of faith” to believe the Good News, and to walk in the Holy Spirit’s application of it in our lives.  The process of dying to self is inevitable, when we choose to believe we have already died to self, in Christ.

The “faith, hope and love” of God, reflected in the early church, transformed the cold, ancient world into a supernatural dynamo of other centered love that shook the foundations of Satan’s kingdom.  Christ “having disarmed principalities and powers, He has made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it”  (Colossians 2:15).

Bearing the full armor of God, the remnant is called to complete the task of bearing the light of God’s character to the world.  We thank God that we are granted the privilege of bearing this message.  (Ephesians 6:10-13).

~Mike Clendenning